Catholic Answers Director of Apologetics Tim Staples and I were bouncing around ideas for blog posts when he told me of two common, related questions he receives while on the road speaking for Catholic Answers. Often, Catholics he meets are extremely frustrated with the quality of the liturgy at the parishes they attend. They are on edge at Mass, wondering what novelty their priest is going to dream up next. Why can't priests just "say the black, do the red"?—a cri de coeur...

"Deviating from faith, they are implicated in the darkness of perpetual blindness, although they have the day of Christ and the light of the Church before them; while seeing nothing, they open their mouth as if they knew everything, keen for vain things and dull for things eternal."

~ Ambrose, Bishop, Father and Doctor of the Church, Saint; commenting in the 4th century on the "wise of the world" who look askance at Christianity, a conflict that has existed from the very birth of the Faith (see "Science and the Church").